Sadistic Sandman
by Razeasha
Summary: Howard Link is exhausted after too many hard days and late nights. Hectic days lead to hectic nights, and his dreamland must suffer. This is Link's trippy dream. Many characters involved. Newest Chapter features Road!
1. The Exposition

Sadistic Sandman

Howard Link is exhausted after too many hard days and late nights. Hectic days lead to hectic nights, and his dreamland must suffer.

At first, I didn't like Link very much, but he grew on me and I wanted to write about him. This story is dedicated to Smiling Mask, who writes a great Link. Her story needs more love! Go check it out!

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Howard Link was getting tired of it all. He was tired of the banter and immaturity of the people who surrounded him. He was tired of being forced to accompany Walker on missions, when the young boy made rash moves. He was especially tired of missions like a more recent one on which he ended up getting possessed and punched in the face. He was also tired of being shut out of his own quarters by Walker's friends, when he had work to do. But, most of all, he was just tired.

Aside from keeping an eye on Walker, he had other jobs to do. Levellier had him completing mounds of paperwork and running classified errands in moments of chaos. Though, he held a great deal of respect for Levellier and would gladly do anything the man asked of him without question. Luckily, tonight he had been ordered to rest, so that he would be more productive and well rested the next day.

He dragged his tired body to the room that he shared with Walker. The white-haired boy was fast asleep, when he entered. He quickly changed and lay down on his bed. The standard issue bed felt exponentially more comfortable, depending on how tired he was. Today, it was like the mattress was massaging his drained body. He soon fell asleep and began to dream.

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"Where am I?" Link wondered aloud. This place didn't look like Headquarters, and it certainly wasn't his bedroom. The floor was wooden. He couldn't tell exactly what the walls were made of, but there were dents and holes in a few places, and other patched areas where holes had probably been created and repaired.

"You're in the dojo." Kanda replied as he entered the room wearing a basic white martial arts gi with a black belt. "This is where we will train."

"Train?" Link narrowed his eyes and began to search Kanda's face for answers. "For what?"

"Don't question me! Have you no respect? Your only reply is to be, 'Osu!'' Kanda walked over to one of the walls and went to pick up something on the floor. He bowed to it, picked it up, and brought it to Link. "Here is your weapon."

Link stared at the broom in Kanda's hands. "Well, accept it. Bow and reach out both hands." Kanda was getting impatient with his pupil. "You have to move quickly, if you want to live!" Link quickly bowed and took the broom from his angry instructor's hands. Kanda swiftly moved to pick up the second broom that was lying against the wall. He returned carrying it. "Face Sensei."

Link's eyes followed Kanda, as the Asian man turned to face a photograph hanging on the wall. Link decided it was best to imitate what Kanda was doing. "Bow," Kanda instructed. They both bowed in unison.

Kanda began teaching him some strange form of martial art using the brooms as weapons. They worked for what seemed like hours. Suddenly, Kanda stopped. "I think you are ready," he said. "Take your weapon outside with you to defend yourself. You must always be ready."

"Osu." Link had quickly picked up on how he was supposed to act. He bowed to Kanda and to the photograph before moving toward the door. He stopped to put on a pair of shoes that he did not remember taking off. Link opened the door and exited the dojo.

Upon shutting the door, the broom in his left hand began to wiggle. It suddenly sprouted arms and legs and began shouting. "Woohoo! I'm free!" It exclaimed in a squeaky voice. "Thank God! It smells like dirty hamster cage and feet in that place…" It wiggled out of his grasp and ran off shouting jovially about its emancipation.

Link blinked. The world around him appeared to have more vibrant hues than he was used to seeing. He was blankly staring at a park. Suddenly, a figure emerged from a large, solid tree trunk. _'Is that even possible?' _He wondered as he eyed her.

She was short with pink hair and a puffy, purple hat with lace around the edges. She was wearing a white button-up shirt with a purple, ruffled skirt and a purple bow around her neck. "Hey, kid, who are you?"

"My name is Inspector Howard Link." He replied plainly. It was the introduction he always used. It was short and curt; it let him get directly to the job at hand.

"I was not asking for your name. I asked you WHO you ARE." She saw that he did not comprehend, so she elaborated, "Who you are should be more than a name, or a position, such as inspector. There should be much more to your being."

"Well, I-who is that?" Link motioned to a blonde man who had appeared at the edge of the forest panting. The man was also in a purple puffy hat, though it lacked frills. He was wearing a purple tie around the neck of his white button-up shirt and a pair of purple shorts.

"That is Bak Chan. He is quite excitable and easily flustered, but he is a kind person. I am For Tan destroyer of all things puny and coach to those who need me!" She placed her hands on her hips and gave a triumphant laugh.

The man reached them. "Did you just do the whole introduction by yourself?" He asked exasperatedly.

"Don't you have ears?" She replied sarcastically.

"Aren't you aware of the values of teamwork?" He retorted. He was getting more flustered with each question. "Anyway, I am Bak Chan."

"I already said that," Fo said with narrowed eyes.

"Well, if you had waited for me, I would have known that," he retorted. He turned to face Link, "And who are you?"

"I am Inspector Howard Link." He replied once more.

"It's a shame," said Fo.

"That you don't know who you are," finished Bak.

"I know very well who I am, thank you. I have spent my whole life as myself - every last minute." Link explained with mild annoyance. _'What are these people talking about anyway?'_

"Are you really you all the time?" Asked Fo.

"Or are you what other people see in you?" Asked Bak.

"Like a warped mirror," the two said in unison.

"Look, I'm sorry, but I am really not sure what you are talking about, and I must be on my way."

"Your way?" Asked Fo with a mocking tone in her voice.

"Which way? To where?" Asked Bak curiously. "There are many ways to go to get many places. How do you know which one is yours, when you don't even know who you are?"

"Or probably even where you are," said Fo in a condescending tone. "Poor kid, you're lost in so many ways."

"Well, then, where am I?" Link asked. He wasn't sure what information to expect, but some might be a little better then none, if it made sense at all, which he doubted it would.

"This is the Land of Asunder. So close is everything, yet so far apart. Yet, it is only as far as you are from yourself. And it is only as unusual as you deem it to be," explained Bak.

"Which, from the look on your face, must be quite unusual." Fo chuckled at the man in front of her who was trying to conceal his puzzlement.

"Go ahead, wander, but don't forget our question! It might help you more than you think," said the two in unison once again. Fo began to slide back through the solid trees. Bak chased after her, moving around the solid objects.

Link still wondered how she did it, as he made his way through the woods. He stared at the trees, some of which were unusually colored with pink, blue, or purple leaves. Ahead of him, there was something enormous and pitch black. As he approached, he saw that it was a tree with giant, dark red apples.

As he approached, the apples began to move and wiggle. As he got closer, he realized that the fruits quite resembled skulls, human skulls.

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Wow, this took a while to write. I wrote most of it a while ago, but I just picked it up today to finish the first chapter. I hope to make this kind of trippy, like Alice in Wonderland, but without the math… Please let me know what you think so far. I plan to have it alternate between funny and dark.


	2. The Forest

Sadistic Sandman 2

Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed chapter one! I hope that you like chapter two as well!

Disclaimer! (Totally forgot this in the first chap, but this stands for the entire story.) All characters are Hoshino's, not mine, and I profit in no way off of this, other than some sense of satisfaction. All twisted ideas are mine, unless they were introduced in cannon.

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Link stared at the apples as he approached the tree. He wasn't quite sure why he moved closer, but it felt like this tree was something that he had to see. Each one of the fruits had a slightly different shape, but they all had sunken, black spots that resembled eyes and a mouth, like faces were rotted into them. Their color was a very deep red, like congealing blood, and their skins shined ominously among the dark leaves.

As Link moved closer, the tree towered over him and seemed larger than any tree he had seen before. He began to hear a quiet moan, no, moans. The apples were moaning. Link was quite taken aback by the fact that these bizarre things were making noise. _'Moaning skull apples…How much weirder is this going to get?'_

It was as if the tree could read his thoughts, because one of the apples began to shout excitedly, "Look! There's a living!"

"Oh, a living!" Exclaimed a few of the other apples.

"I remember being a living," said another with a sigh.

Link stared in awe and horror at the strange plant. His analytical brain started picking apart what the fruits were doing and saying. _'Could this really be a tree with the souls of the dead trapped in apples? That's ridiculous, but why would they refer to me as a living otherwise? They do look like skulls.' _He took mental notes on the tree, until an apple addressed him directly and brought him out of his thoughts.

"Do you know how many of us there really are?" Inquired the apple in a wistful female voice.

"Won't you count us?" Asked another, which sounded quite young.

"How many of us count to you?" Questioned another apple with a sarcastic tone.

Link began to count under his breath, but, as he counted, it seemed like there were more and more apples. He saw them appearing all over the branches swinging this way and that and moaning. They were even appearing in places where he had already counted. It seemed like the more he counted, the more there were.

"I can't. I can't count you." Link felt insecure about not completing a task that he was asked to do, but it wasn't a task from the Order, from Levellier, who would surely show some sort of retribution when failure was present. He thought that maybe his insecurity stemmed more from the horrid tree before him. It did unnerve him quite a bit.

Link looked closely and saw, between the deathly black leaves, some tiny, sickly green apples beginning to grow. One of the red apples caught him gazing at them and said in a sage old voice, "Ah, sometimes, you know, death grows slowly. They will fully develop into ripened sorrow one day."

"However," continued another apple in an inappropriately bubbly tone, "sometimes they just pop up quickly among us. Pop! And then there's a fully ripened misery!"

"Sometimes," said another apple in a small voice, "a man comes and picks us and throws us into another world. We splatter and make such a mess."

"I don't know why he does that," mused another. "He's such a strange old man."

"He is, isn't he?" Chorused a few more apples surrounding the one who had just spoken.

The fruits grew quiet, as they thought about the old man. It was then that link herd the whispers. A tiny green apple would wiggle, and one could hear a noise like a whisper emitted from its skin. Many were wiggling and whispering.

Link froze, petrified by the realization that some of those whispers sounded familiar. He couldn't tell whose whispers they were, but he knew them. They somehow felt like people who were very important to him. They were close to him, and they were slowly dying. He could not help them. All of his training could not stop these people he knew from growing into these terrifying fruits!

He regained control of his legs, slowly backed away from the tree, and broke into a run. He moved swiftly through the forest dodging trees, hoping that he would not find another similar to the one he had just left.

"Heeeeeeyyy!" He heard someone yell from above him. Reluctantly, he slowed his pace and looked up. "Why are you zooming around in such a hurry?" Asked a girl who looked like she was in her early teens. She had short hair that seemed to stand up in spikes on her head and eyes of amber.

He stared up at her in her strange attire. He wondered why there were holes in her black stockings. _'Women should not climb trees in their stockings…or their skirts for that matter.' _He thought upon seeing her short, ruffled black skirt. She wore a black ruffled blouse and a golden ribbon around her neck as well.

"Hey, I asked you a question?" She said in a pouting tone.

"Oh, sorry," He replied. He had been so busy staring at her attire to remember her question. He had also been quite relieved that she was not another talking apple. "What did you ask me?"

"I asked why you were running," she stated matter-of-factly.

Link didn't want to admit that he was running away from a tree, but he was pretty sure that most people feared death at least a little. So, being well versed in the ways of sidestepping questions and revealing as little as possible, he answered, "I am in a hurry to be somewhere else."

"Somewhere else?" She asked with a hint of amusement in her voice. "By somewhere else, do you mean you would rather be anywhere else than where you were?"

Link didn't answer. He was distracted by the branches of the tree, which were populated with dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys. One doll looked just like Lenalee, if she had longer hair set in curls. He decided that it was best not to ask. He was tired of all these bizarre questions, so he thought he would try countering with his own. "Where I've been has no relevance to where I'm going. Where I've been will not matter when I reach my new destination, will it?"

"Of course it will!" She exclaimed with a laugh. "I would know. I am called Road and am quite versed in the way of paths. You carry a piece of where you've been to every place you go. You might break off part of the piece and let it go, but you will always have a tiny piece of where you've been. Some people learn from where they've been to change where they are going. Though they think they left the places and experiences behind, the lesson is still attached to the places in some way. So, yes, it will always matter."

"I see." Those were the only words that Link could muster, as he reflected on his adventure thus far.

"If you are in a hurry to be somewhere else, I can help you." She tapped on the tree and a red and gold door appeared at the trunk. "This will take you out of the forest," she said with a coy smile, "if that is what you desire."

Link did not entirely trust her. There was something about her that seemed a little eerie. "Where does it lead?"

"It leads to where you need to go, but honestly, I don't know where that is. Only the door knows."

After what had happened so far, Link was unsure of whether or not he wanted to trust a psychic door, but he thought that it must be better than running through the woods. He firmly grasped the handle and opened the door. The room on the other side was dimly lit and he didn't know whether or not he really wanted to enter.

"Now, now," Road chided. "You've made a choice. You must follow through, and don't forget what I said about the places you've been!"

Link walked into the dim room. His well-trained eyes were adjusting to the darkness, when he turned around and saw that the door had disappeared. It appeared he saw in some sort of large tent.

What will happen to Link next? Well, I can promise you that the next chapter will not be as creepy as this one. Please review and share your thoughts! I think I'll stick with this pattern of him encountering two parts of the dream in each chapter. I have the characters for next chapter already chosen, but, if there's someone that you would really like Link to encounter, please say so in a review!


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